There is a Unified Modeling Language (UML™) as a notation method for describing an object-oriented system design (for example, “UML 2001: A Standardization Odyssey” by Cris Kobryn; Communications of the ACM; October 1999; Vol. 42; No. 10). Recently there have been growing analyses and designs using UML™ in an object-oriented system (including an organization or a project) development.
In implementing a system designed by using UML™, the order of implementation need to be determined on the basis of dependency between classes. For example, if there is an inheritance relation between classes, a parent class needs to be implemented earlier than dependent child classes. If there is an ownership relation between classes, an owned class need be implemented earlier than an owning class.? In other words, a depended class is implemented earlier than a depending class. It is the same in testing the system; the depended class need be tested earlier than the depending class.
Conventionally, for system implementation and testing, a task schedule has been generated manually by determining the order of implementation or of testing of classes while implementing classes in parallel for those that can be implemented in parallel to improve efficiency of the development, considering various dependency between classes.
As set forth above, to implement or test a system designed by using UML™, conventionally the task schedule has been generated manually for their execution.
Along with the recent popularization of object-oriented technologies, more and more large-scale systems comprising a huge number of classes are being developed. In this sort of large-scale system, dependency between classes forming the system is complicated, by which a determination of the order of implementing or testing classes is difficult, time consuming and prone to error. Therefore, if the task schedule is generated manually in the large-scale system, an oversight of the dependency between classes may occur, which may result in an inefficient schedule insufficiently reflecting the dependency between classes.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of scheduling tasks from system design information such as a UML™ class diagram mechanically without manual labor and to achieve automatic task scheduling for implementing or testing of a system using the method.